In the prior art, it has been recognized that the bandwidth of serial channels is substantially less than that of information sources and sinks. It has further been recognized that communicating only the changes to files or text strings of characters would require far less bandwidth than returning an amended text over the same communication links.
A file, which is no more than a formatted character string when in storage, appears as a two-dimensional series of lines of characters. Such a multiple line body may have lines or characters added, deleted, or modified.
It should be recalled that characters are internally represented within both a text processor and a source as coded numbers. It is only for output indication, such as display or printing, that the alphabetic representation itself must be made. Typically, coded number standards such as ASCII and EBCDIC have long been used in the art.
It is also observed that if one sums the coded numbers for each line respectively, the likelihood of any two sums being the same is very small. However, a checking number formed from the mere summation or multiplication of its coded number constituents is commutative. That is, the same checking number will arise even though the permutative order varies. Thus, "the rde ball bounces" has the same value as "the red ball bounces". By recursively combining and ringshifting the coded numbers in a line n a predetermined order (say left to right), a different order of characters will yield a different checking number.
Bakula et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,204,206, "Video Display System", issued May 20, 1980, describes a host and remote text processor where the text in different areas of the display screen at the text processor may be scrolled and edited independently. Data from the display is transmitted one line at a time during the scrolling to the host.